The Vanished Queen

by Lisbeth Campbell

  “So on the next raid we bring an archer. What surprise will the resistance have for us that time?”

  It was an impossible question, and Mirovian ignored it. “How’d they get explosives, sir?”

  “The man who had brought the explosive was killed. We have no idea who he was or where he lived. There could be—probably are—dozens more of the things hidden somewhere in the city. Let’s go in.” He swung off his horse.

  The floors were smeared with dried mud from the passage of soldiers who had searched the place. A stool lay on its side in the front room. A spider had built a web between the rungs. Beside the stool was a large bloodstain.

  Esvar pointed at the stain. “Someone died here, to leave that much blood. That’s not supposed to happen. What went wrong?”

  “Plenty of room to disarm him,” said Mirovian. He squatted and righted the stool. “Especially with a whip. If the resister used the stool as a shield or threw it, say, that could have worked to hold someone off. What do the soldiers remember, sir?”

  “The ones who weren’t killed themselves deny doing it,” Esvar said in as matter-of-fact a tone as he could manage. He did not want to imply that he thought he was being lied to, but he did not want to foreclose the possibility either. “They went in without a light,” he added. “They were relying on a lamp outside. Was that the error?”

  Mirovian looked at the unplastered wall, where boards were darkened with rot and splinters protruded. “If an oil lamp had spilled during a fight, this place would have gone up like kindling. That’s a hell of a risk. It seems to me that two resisters dead and one missing is better than all the soldiers and the resisters dead and fire running through this part of Karegg.”

  “So I judged,” Esvar said.

  The other two rooms on the first floor consisted of a kitchen in the rear of the house and a windowless room with a table and a few chairs. There was nothing to remark on in either. Esvar led Mirovian up to the attic for the next stage.

  The top floor was one large room with one window each on the street and the back. It was very hot. The ceiling was low and slanted sharply down so that both men had to bend. Soldiers’ footprints tracked through the dust. The soldiers would have been handicapped by the darkness and the ceiling.

  Esvar crouched by the window as though preparing to shoot. The archer had been in a tricky position, and killing three men had not been nearly as easy as it looked. She must have leaned halfway out the window to shoot. Her aim had been damn good.

  He rubbed his shoulder, remembering the arrow that had grazed it, and said, “What do you see?”

  “Are you sure only one got away?”

  “Yes.” Esvar moved aside. “Could you climb out?”

  The lieutenant eased his upper body out the window, which was barely wide enough, and reached up to grab at the gable roof. He swore. Esvar heard a crash, probably a slate striking the ground.

  “She had to be small,” Mirovian said when he had managed to get back in. His uniform was smeared with dirt, and there was blood on his hand where he had cut it against a slate. “She must have waited here as soon as the resisters knew they were trapped, but getting out that window and onto the roof, in the rain… That took nerve.” His tone was almost admiring.

  “And ability,” Esvar said. He led the way back to the stairs.

  On the second floor were three bedrooms. The one in the front held a narrow bed with a thin mattress and an empty bookcase. The second room was empty. In the rear room a bed with thrown-back sheets occupied most of the space, but Esvar’s attention went straight to the window.

  The glass was broken. A few jagged, dangerous-looking shards protruded upward from the bottom of the frame. Smashed glass on the floor had been broken into smaller pieces by booted feet tramping on it. The wood was blotched with water stains and blood.

  Avoiding the glass, he examined the wall around the window and saw what he had hoped not to see: faded blood marks in a spray pattern that spoke of a cut artery. The resister had broken the window and used the glass to slice his throat open. Esvar turned around and looked at the bed. A large brown stain lay over the crumpled linens.

  His stomach tightened painfully. He threw his hand to the windowsill for support as the world rocked.

  Blood wet and red on the coverlet, the floor, the overturned table. A crack in the mirror, books in disarray on one shelf. A bottle of spilled lavender scent perfumed the room. “Get him out of here,” said Tevin. The king said, “No. Look at this, both of you. Look long. This is what the Tazekhs did. Remember this. Kill them for this.” The guard behind Esvar put a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.

  “Sir? My lord?”

  He felt unsteady in the knees, but he kept his breakfast down and said, “Here we had a suicide. I don’t think that could have been prevented.”

  “The resisters will do that?”

  “When it’s a choice between taking a knife to their own throat and keeping their secrets, or facing what’s waiting for them back at the Citadel, it’s not a hard decision to make. Have you ever watched an interrogation?”

  “Um, no, sir.”

  Count yourself lucky, Esvar thought. He considered ordering Mirovian to observe, so the man would know what happened to his prisoners, and decided not to. It would either ruin him or drive him into the arms of the resistance. And would that be so bad a thing? he asked himself.

  The thought was almost as much of a shock as the memory had been. He had committed himself to opposing the king more deeply than he had realized.

  He said, “It’s not a necessary part of your training. But the stories you’ve heard are probably all true. Many of the resisters can’t screw themselves up for suicide, but some can, especially the older ones. The raids help us reduce their forces, but we don’t get a damned lot of information from them.” Us. Their. We. He hated it. I’m glad she got away, he thought.

  “Is that what happened with Captain Havidian’s raid, sir?”

  Perceptive question. “A suicide? No. One of his men got caught up too much in the heat of things and botched it.”

  “Botched it like—” He broke off.

  “Like one of my men did downstairs? The circumstances were similar. My man didn’t kill the leader of the resistance, though. One of the leaders. They’ve been even fiercer since.”

  “Who are their leaders now?”

  “There is a woman named Sparrow, about whom no one knows anything except that she seems to lack neither money nor ingenuity.” He looked at the broken glass again. “We’ve seen enough. You’ll come with me on the next raid, and if all goes well, I’ll turn you loose after that.”

  Mirovian’s hand was still bleeding, and he cut a strip of cloth from the bedsheet to bandage it. Esvar tied it for him, thinking vaguely as he did that he had seen a cut like this on someone else’s hand recently.

  They went out and mounted. Mirovian got up more slowly than usual and stared up at the gable. Esvar couldn’t read his face. Perplexity? Concern? There was something going on in that College-trained mind. Was he still puzzling out the resister’s escape?

  “How do you know where to raid?” Mirovian asked. It sounded like an afterthought.

  “That’s the spymaster’s responsibility. He takes his orders from the king.”

  Mirovian opened his mouth, thought better of whatever he was going to ask, and nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice as crisp and soldierly as any commander could want.

  Damn, Esvar thought. The man was holding something back. If he asked now, all he would get was bluster. He would let the secret sit within Mirovian long enough to be uncomfortable.

  * * *

  At the Citadel, he went to his mother’s rooms. They were unguarded, the corridor empty. A fireplace was set in one wall, its hearth empty and clean. Mirantha had kept things on that mantel, a vase of flowers in the summer, a thick candle nested within sprigs of holly in the winter. There had been a little wooden cat, narrow-faced, sitting upright, tail curl
ed around its feet. And lavender, bunches of it hanging dried from each end of the mantel. The tiny blossoms sometimes fell onto the hearth and dotted the stone with color.

  Servants swept the floors and cleaned the windows as they did everywhere in the Citadel, but the furniture was covered against dust, and the walls were bare of any ornament. The queen’s jewels, her books, her clothing, all had been packed away, waiting for a return that would never happen. The air did not smell of lavender anymore. The glass in her window had not been broken. Not that escape for her.

  What if she had found some way to flee? Blood without a body proved nothing.

  It was a childish fantasy. She would not have abandoned him or his brother, especially not then, when her lover was dead and Tevin was being pulled closer and closer to Karolje. The guards had been found killed, all four of them, and her two maids. Esvar could not remember their names. The queen was gone, abducted, and two months later Karolje broke the treaty and invaded Tazekhor in revenge. Tevin had told him before the army went south that it had been Karolje’s own soldiers who took Mirantha.

  Why? Esvar had always thought Karolje killed her because that was what Karolje did. She had been unfaithful; when her lover was executed, everyone expected her death to be next. He saw now that Karolje would not kill a tool as useful to him as a queen without a good reason. If he had wanted an excuse to start a second war, he could have found others. Mirantha’s death was not a matter of impulse, as beating her or strangling her in bed might have been. It had been ordered by a man who excelled at strategy.

  The only possible explanation was that she had been a threat. She had been a warrior’s daughter, tall and strong and skilled with weapons. Karolje was sixteen years older than her. It would have been possible for her to kill him if he was drunk or sick or sleeping. The king had moved first.

  MIRANTHA

  WHEN SHE FINDS out she is pregnant, she finds out that Ashevi too can be cruel.

  It is four months since the first time. They have devised ways and places to meet, never twice the same, never without the sense of danger. She has grown to crave that alertness. The act is not lovemaking, not with such speed and silence, but it is not animal rutting either. She is learning what pleasure is as well as desire. He shows her small tendernesses and brings gifts, a book or a flower or a velvet ribbon. Once he gave her fresh lavender, but she did not dare keep it. She asks him why he breaks his vows, and he tells her that priests’ strictures were made by men and love was made by the gods. Because it is not at all unheard of for priests to have bastard children, and because what he says is what she needs, she accepts it. She never asks him why he dares to go behind Karolje’s back. Asking that would be sure to make someone notice.

  Then she misses her bleeding and her breasts grow sore. She tells him while they stand on a courtyard balcony, watching Tevin shoot his bow on his eleventh birthday. The demonstration is attended by many observers, but they have the balcony to themselves. King Piyr, who should be with her, has been advised by his doctor not to spend so long in the cold. He is weak and frequently ill now. She stares at her son, hoping he will make a better man than her husband, and says, “I’m pregnant.”

  “You have to get rid of it,” he says at once.

  She already knows that, but she wanted more kindness from him. Her hands pressing into the rail of the balcony, she stands silently while Tevin nocks and draws. The arrow hits the center of the target among a thicket of other arrows. He has missed by a few inches only once. She was a good archer as a girl, and watching him, she longs for that past. The autumn wind blows bits of straw loosened from the target around the courtyard.

  She says, “You might act a little more unhappy about losing a child.”

  He looks at her, and the pressure of his gaze makes her glance away from her son. The pupils of his eyes go on forever into a great darkness. “I don’t want a child. And certainly not with you. It’s much too risky. Get rid of it, and make sure you don’t conceive again.”

  She wants to strike him. “You sound like Karolje,” she says.

  Another arrow hits the center. He claps. He says, “Don’t come near me until it’s taken care of. And if it gets found out and you cry rape, I will deny everything.”

  On the balcony opposite, Esvar stands with his tutor. The boy watches his brother but Nihalik is watching her. She is sure he knows.

  Tevin has used up all his arrows. One of the armory boys runs to pull them from the target. She leans over the rail and calls to the prince.

  He looks up. “Lady Mother?” She sees his father in his face, and also a line of his jaw that belonged to her family. He is beautiful and healthy and untainted.

  “Split an arrow for me,” she says.

  On his third shot, he does. As the applause echoes around the courtyard, she looks at Nihalik and asks him with her eyes to come to her.

  * * *

  That evening, he brings the books in which Tevin has done his lessons and the pile of paper that is Esvar’s work, handwriting large and awkward. Any soldiers or servants who glance at the papers and books will know exactly what they are and think Nihalik has come to discuss the boys’ studies.

  Night falls early this time of year, and though it is not late it is quite dark. The lamplight only brings out shadows. She says, “Tevin will be treated more as a man now that he has turned eleven. The king sent to speak with him this evening. Is he aware of what it means that he will someday be king?” She hopes he knows what she is asking. Even here, in her own room, she is guarded with her words.

  “Yes. And he knows what is needed for his own safety.”

  “Piyr is ailing and old. When he dies, Karolje will replace you with someone loyal to him. I am afraid Esvar will be too impressionable. What do you suggest I do? Anyone I put forth, Karolje will reject out of hand.”

  “There are men at the College who can be nudged to put forth their names without you having anything to do with it, Mirantha. But I would have expected you to propose Ashevi.”

  It is a challenge. The two men do not like each other. Until today, she has thought it a natural antipathy between them, groundless.

  She says, “I don’t doubt either his learning or his capacity to teach. But…”

  “I can’t tell whether you want me to convince you he is the right man or the wrong one.”

  It stings. She wants to love Ashevi with the same simplicity she did yesterday. “He would never hurt the boys,” she says.

  “He might well hurt you.”

  The days—the years—have stretched her to a breaking point she was unaware of. She snaps. Her hand comes down hard over his on the table, and she says in a fierce voice that seems to come from outside herself, “Do you know what I have endured since I married? Ashevi cannot hurt me more than Karolje has.”

  “It is the ones we love who hurt us the most,” he says. He presses her hand. “Always.”

  She whispers, “Is it so obvious?”

  “Send your maid away for ten minutes,” he says after a long silence. “Tell her you have a headache and need medicine. And strong wine to drink it with.”

  As soon as the door closes behind the maid, Nihalik says gently, “Has he got you with child?”

  It was why she sent for him, but she can’t bring herself to say the words. She is ashamed it has happened, ashamed to ask for help, ashamed he guesses. She feels herself flushing and can’t meet his eyes.

  He goes to her mantel. She hears the soft brush of paper against wood and knows he has left something for her. His movements have disturbed her bunches of dried lavender, and the scent wafts through the room. Outside the window is a wall of darkness. She is afraid and cold and lonely and wishes she were home in the south.

  Nihalik returns to the table and, taking his seat, pulls one of the books to him. He says, his voice a little too loud, “I can write out a course of study for each of the princes, my lady. It might be of help.”

  It might also be dangerous. “When the time comes,�
�� she says. “I am satisfied with things as they stand now.”

  They speak of safe subjects until the maid returns with the powder from the doctor. Nihalik gathers the boys’ work and says, “You can be proud of them.” He bows and departs.

  The maid mixes the drug with the wine, sees that she drinks a little, and helps her out of her dress into a night shift. Mirantha dismisses her. She adds the powder that Nihalik left and drinks again. This time the wine is bitter and makes her mouth tingle.

  Her head is hurting in truth now, and the candle is unbearably bright. Her abdomen and lower back cramp as though she is being knifed. She blows out the candle and lies down, pulling the darkness around her. The world spins a little.

  Merciful sleep comes soon.

  * * *

  In the morning, the pain is gone and her bleeding has started. She feels light-headed and weak. Just a little late, that is all the servants will think if they notice. She will make sure it does not happen again.

  The only way to be sure is to avoid Ashevi.

  For a long time she sits by her window, thinking. Overnight, autumn has turned to winter. Snow is drifted on the sill and falls onto the ground twenty feet below. The garden is white and the lake only a distant blur of grey. The air next to the window is so cold she should pull the drapes, but she wants the light.

  At last she rises and writes a message to Ashevi that says only, It is done. She folds it and seals it, then stands by the hearth and considers throwing it into the fire. The message is an invitation of sorts. If she tells him nothing, he will stay away from her. Snow whisks against the window glass.

  Then, despising her weakness, she gives the maid the message to deliver. He will see her tomorrow, the next day. She can’t give that up yet.

  ANZA SHUT THE door behind her—Radd was still working inside—and halted. Rumil leaned against the corner of the building, waiting for her, handsome as ever.